POLITICALLY, the Middle East has always been a hall of mirrors, and never more so than right now as the US-led coalition takes the war to the Islamic State (IS) militants.

In doing so Washington has kickstarted a complex reshuffling of allegiances and tactical moves in the region the monitoring and analysis of which is enough to make one's brain short circuit.

Suffice to say that it's impossible here to provide a comprehensive take on the current situation on the ground regarding the coalition's airstrike operation.

One pressing question worth addressing is the degree to which it might erode IS's capability as a terrorist force and what it will mean for that other key jihadist group in the region, al Qaeda.

From the outset, it's worth realising that it wasn't simply IS that bore the brunt of the US attacks.

Washington, in effect, took the opportunity to land a double blow in Syria, striking at both the headline-grabbing IS and the much more shadowy Khorasan Group.

Who are the Khorasan group one might well ask? Certainly up until recently few people outside security and intelligence specialists had heard much of this comparatively small cell of well-trained al Qaeda operatives that takes its name from a region that once spanned parts of present-day Iran, Afghanistan and other neighbouring countries. So why then today does the Khorasan group matter?

While the group has been watched by Western intelligence services for years, it has recently set alarm bells ringing because of its likely links to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)

What makes this so significant is that AQAP is renowned for its bomb-making skills.

Think of the so-called underpants bomber who tried unsuccessfully to bring down an airliner over Detroit in 2009 or the explosive device designed to be hidden inside printer cartridges carried in air freight cargo and AQAP's track record of "creative bombmaking" speaks for itself.

What's more, its chief bomb-maker, Ibrahim al Asiri, having dodged numerous attempts by the CIA to kill him, is now suspected to be in Syria training other hand-picked operatives with a view to striking targets in the West.

According to some senior US officials, the Khorasan group's planning was now "reaching an advanced stage" and most certainly involved specially constructed bombs that can be smuggled past security systems on to commercial airliners.

Given the vast number of foreign volunteers who have made their way to Syria to join jihadist groups, the "clear and present danger" of some of these fighters being trained and recruited to return to their home countries to launch terror campaigns has been one key factor in determining why the initial US airstrikes hit as hard at the Khorasan group as at IS itself. That these were carried out exclusively by the US and not other coalition forces might even indicate Washington was in possession of very specific intelligence on the group's plans.

However, as a "department" within the main al Qaeda organisation, the Khorasan group may oddly enough also find itself in a position to benefit from the future onslaught of airstrikes that will now concentrate on IS and its fighters.

Most analysts agree that air and missile strikes alone are unlikely to destroy or even comprehensively degrade the IS in Syria. They will however seriously undermine its ability to mass forces for offensive operations of the kind they have been most successful in mounting there and in Iraq.

Washington and some of its allies will be looking to bolster a more comprehensive campaign that extends way beyond air power but stops short of the dreaded boots on the ground scenario of which the Obama administration and US public are so fearful.

This campaign is sure to be aimed at IS's resupply networks, including finances and manpower.

Other indigenous forces, whether Syrian rebels in Syria or peshmerga and Iraqi forces in Iraq, would be at the forefront of any such operation to reclaim territory from IS, and US training and arms supplies will never be far away.

As previously mentioned, strange as it might seem both the Khorasan group and al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, the al Nusra Front, may actually stand to reap some advantage from all this military muscle being used to bludgeon IS.

The simple fact is that many IS fighters with bombs, drone strikes and Tomahawk missiles raining down on their well established and clearly identified positions may well head back to the comparative sanctuary of the mother organisation that is al Qaeda.

Should these defections by IS fighters to the ranks of the al Nusra Front grow, IS's manpower reserves could be considerably punctured. This of course does not mean the jihadist threat has gone away, but simply relocated. Often at times it is impossible to distinguish between al Qaeda's affiliate al Nusra Front and the more moderate Syrian rebel groups Washington is desperate to support. This gives the coalition something of a problem when it comes to accurately pinpointing and targeting IS and al Nusra cadres.

As one US commentator pointed out, it is not inconceivable Washington and its allies could find themselves training, arming and bombing the same people at the same time.

Right now in Syria, as in Iraq, the Middle East's political hall or mirrors continues to confuse and make elusive the very jihadist enemies those within the coalition seek to eliminate.